The firm, which provides agriculture technology to farmers as well as large companies including PepsiCo and Mahindra & Mahindra, will use the money to scale up its technology, hire talent and also explore opportunities in markets such as Kenya, Philippines, Mexico and Indonesia.

"Large companies have not given technology to agriculture, we are focusing on that," said Krishna Kumar, 31-year-old chief executive of CropIn, who declined to share details of the amount invested.

CropIn offers web and mobile information and communication technology including enterprise resource planning and business intelligence for agriculture.

The platform enables farms become visible online and helps them adopt best global agricultural practices. It also makes crops traceable so that harvested crops meet global quality standards.

This technology has been implemented in 25,000 acres of farms belonging to 15,000 farmers and is used by large firms such as ITC Group, Rallis and Nuziveedu Seeds.

CropIn also uses data analytics technology to sift through huge agricultural data and provide hidden insights to the customer to improve their next season crop productivity.

"For example, if there are pests in the farm, the farmer takes picture of the damaged crops, records a voice message and sends it to experts for diagnosis, who respond in seconds," said Kumar. India is one of the world's leading food producers, but accounts for less than 1.5% of international food trade.

Experts say there is a 30% loss from farm to fork. It is estimated that foodgrain worth Rs 90,000 crore is lost to pest attacks.

An electronics engineer from Visvesvaraya Technological University, Kumar quit his job at General Electric and cofounded CropIn with childhood friend and engineer Kunal Prasad in 2010. They pooled in Rs 7 lakh from friends to kickstart the venture. Later they raised total seed funding of Rs 1 crore from Seeders Venture Capital and Ankur capital.

"We liked the team. They are very passionate about agriculture and bringing in efficiency," said Pallav Nadhani, partner at Seeders. "Everybody is focused on ecommerce, but agriculture is the backbone of this country."

The initial six months were testing times for CropIn, but a successful pilot project with Safal, an arm of the National Dairy Development Board, helped the startup attract multinationals as customers. "PepsiCo and FieldFresh mentored us and also connected us to other customers," said Krishna.